Stefan Metaal

Bio

Stefan Metaal studied sociology at the University of Amsterdam and worked as a researcher for Reijndorp Urban Research, among others. He is currently doing research for his PhD at the University of Amsterdam. His publications include articles for the magazine Rooilijn and he is one of the authors of the book Buitenwijk. Stedelijkheid op afstand (1998).

The Architecture of Use and Appropriation.This issue
of OASE is situated within a
tradition that gives a central role to questions of use and appropriation in
architectural reflection. The general attention to use and appropriation is
part and parcel of a layered critique of architecture.

Exhibitions
and performative spaces have long been at the centre of OMA’s – and now mostly AMO’s
– work. Two key exhibitions of the late 20th century roughly bookend
the time span covered by OASE 94 –
which title is inspired by OMA’s The
First Decade 1989 show at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. On
the one hand, OMA’s participation in the Strada
Novissima at the First International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice
Biennale, for which a facade had been elaborated between 1979 and 1980; and on
the other hand, the Deconstructivist
Architecture exhibition that opened in June 1988 at the MoMA in New York. Yet
the Strada Novissima facade has been omitted
from all OMA’s chronologies. What sense can we make of that project and what
did it represent? Which were the commonalities between OMA’s agonistic
participation and other projects featuring Koolhaas’ paradoxical use of history?

This thematic issue of OASE sheds new light on the architectural
production of OMA during its first decade (1978-1989) – a mythical but
at the same time not very well known period in the history of the
world-famous office of Rem Koolhaas.

On November 20th OASE and the Architecture Film Festival, will screen “Robinson in Ruins” by Patrick Keiller in Floriscoop Rotterdam at the launch of the new OASE #93 magazine. The film will be introduced by the editors Michiel Dehaene and Claudia Faraone in English. Entrance is 5 euro. Seats are limited, please reserve a seat by filling in the form on the website of the AFFR.

With this theme issue of OASE we would like to transcend national or polemical discussions, and look at the architectural production of O.M.A. during this first decade, leading to 1989 — a mythical but at the same time not very well-known period in the history of the office.